1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a reel slitter with a slitting station for slitting a material web into partial webs and a winding station to wind the partial webs into partial web rolls. A transporter is utilized for transporting at least a partial web beginning from the slitting station to the winding station. The transporter is disposed between the slitting station and the winding station.
The invention is to be described below with the aid of a paper web as an example of a material web, without the invention being limited thereto.
2. Discussion of Background Information
Paper webs are often produced in widths which are too large for a subsequent user, for example, a printer. In one of the final production steps, the paper webs are thus adjusted to the correct width in the reel slitter, in which the webs are slit into partial webs. In addition, the edges of the paper webs can be straightened by such a step. The partial webs are then wound in the winding station into partial web rolls. The partial web rolls then have a width between approximately 0.4 m and approximately 3.8 m. The diameter of such web rolls is generally greater than approximately 1.0 m. In this case, the material web is either unwound from a so-called jumbo roll, the width and diameter of which is substantially larger, or the material web is supplied directly from the calender.
Particularly, in the last case, it is necessary to perform the starting of a new partial web roll at the production velocity of the calender. For this, it is customarily planned that one first slits a narrow strip which is then transported by means of various transport systems to its point of destination, namely to the reel core in the winding station.
When the partial web roll has arrived at the calender, then web tension is applied to the narrow strips which are continually made wider, until the desired partial web width is attained. In this process, it is certainly disadvantageous that the first paper layers are wound in a telescope-like fashion, which leads to a conical paper roll.
If one wants to fasten the partial web with the entire width on the reel core, to date the only possibility has been to do so manually. However, in the manual operation, one cannot maintain the desired velocity.
Transporters are also known which convey the partial web with the entire desired width. Such transporters operate either with overpressure, in that they blow the paper web via spoilers, or with underpressure, if an air-permeable transport belt is guided over a suction box.
A reel slitter must be as flexible as possible in its slitting cycle; i.e., it must be able to produce partial webs with varying and alternating widths. Accordingly, one would have to furnish the entire working width of the reel slitter with corresponding transporters. However, this is not economically feasible as such transporters are relatively costly.